Among coachmen, as among us all, whoever starts shouting at others with the greatest self-assurance, and shouts first, is right: Tolstoy
Brazil has to “stop being a country of sissies”, and people should face coronavirus with an “open chest”, said president Jair Bolsonaro this week. The apparent message: The virus that has killed more than 1,62,000 and infected 5.67 million in his country could be frightened out of the way.
The cocky and bellicose braggadocio is all too familiar to Americans. To hear Trump tell it, he faced COVID-19 with an open chest and the virus was simply no match for him. “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to beat it,” he told the country. Before too long he was echoing the Bolsonaro line that COVID-19 was “like the flu,” and that “we have learned to live with it.”
“I feel so powerful,” Trump tweeted to Americans after receiving the world’s best medical treatment and overcoming COVID-19 following his helicoptered evacuation from the White House to the Walter Reed Medical Centre. He soon echoed Bolsonaro and called the virus “far less lethal” than the flu for “most populations”. To date, the virus has killed 2,41,000 and infected 10.5 million in the United States.
“Everything is now a pandemic. I am sorry for the dead, I am sorry. We are all going to die one day, here everyone is going to die one day,” said the smug and cocksure Bolsonaro, who also contracted COVID-19 and recovered, albeit, like Trump, with the country’s best possible care not available to most of his countrymen. “There is no point in escaping from this, from reality.”
At play is an active principle of extreme dread of exhibiting an inferior self, because manliness is the point, and working through COVID-19 is the macho thing to do, and vulgarities stress the macho image both men are parlaying into political power.
In shocking synchronicity, their machismo-infested styles have skewed, ridiculed even, mask-wearing as a sign of weakness, and encouraged social closeness while blatantly condescending COVID-mitigating distance rules to prevent transmission.
Both men were lucky in their COVID-19 misfortune, with mild symptoms and world-class treatment, but that is not something either of them will mention. The frontal, pugilistic verbal attack is a defining element of their political brands — masculinity weaponised to a toxic level.
It is strategic posturing where the important thing is to be seen cocksure, certain of their conviction without signals of doubt. They see no benefit of sharing the truth about the COVID-19 threat. The aim is to dupe enough people through sheer bravado, and promote conformism. They know that since imagination is not evenly distributed, weaker people will sheepishly acquiesce to the stronger man.
This is where anti-intellectualism adds a new, deadlier dimension to this toxic masculinity. Both men manipulate faith to generate distrust in analysis, rationality, and science, plucking passions to rally people to their means.
It is the passionate style both men use in their speech that overcomes the fact that they have no valid argument for what they are asking people to do. They know that enough people place considerable faith on people with strong opinions, that there is a certain portion of the population that respond well to authoritarian leadership.
So these two men have shown better than anyone in living memory that it is the words of angry men that are particularly fruitful in tapping into a hunger to be led by strong masculinity and that the passion that comes with it waves away rational thought in favour of mass behaviour, giving their styles functional success.
Functional success, however, is not effective success. The United States and Brazil are number 1 and number 2 in COVID-19 infections and death tallies on the planet.
It is no coincidence that their leaders are the ones least inclined to let their people know the truth, to release the truth so that informed decisions can be made, infections be prevented, and people’s lives saved.
Maintaining an appearance of hardness, suppressing emotions and masking distress in public, keeping people from truthful information, allowing large portions of their countrymen to life with unfounded beliefs and false hope are simply elements and casualties of a form of discursive machismo that is as violent as it is subtle.
The derogatory “maricas — sissies” stereotype used by Bolsonaro this week plays well with those predisposed to praise machismo as a form of domination and as a means of social control, playing on a male aversion to showing weakness and to, thus, take risks to get to country moving in order to spur the economy.
In his own effort to do the same, Trump has stigmatised the use of masks, peeling off his own mask after leaving the hospital following successful COVID-19 hospital. The apparent message: Taking personal risks will corner the virus.
Cultural assumptions have the power to shape mass behaviour. Both these men, Trump and Bolsonaro, continue to manipulate people to believe that macho men accomplish great things with nothing but bravery. The truth, of course, is much messier. When it comes to COVID-19, much deadlier. 4,00,000 Americans and Brazilians should prove them wrong.
But we are seeing in these two contemporary cases that intimidation and displays of dominance are mechanisms of social control that work well and with a great deal of obedience in the public sphere.
The aggressive interruptions of reporters doing their jobs and asking questions, derogatory statements about those with whom they disagree, the disregard for the qualifications and competence of scientists, the verbal abuse in speeches of those who do not fall in line, the incitement of boos in crowds, the mocking looks and facial expressions, the condescension — all those are tools of a toxic masculinity that thrives by penalising those who do not conform and celebrating those who do, despite the harm that causes to society in general, as long as it advances the goal at hand.
The violence of deaths, and infections — more than 1,40,000 cases each day in America, 50,000 in Brazil, 2,000 plus deaths together each day —are an extremely toxic effect on the life of both societies, and those numbers are projected to double in great part due to the messages of Trump and Bolsonaro over these past months.
Tolstoy was wrong. The men, the country leaders, who shout first and loudest, with the greatest self-assurance in the age of COVID-19 are the ones most wrong on their “ if they die, they die ” approach.
